Since that time he’d established a routine of working long hours, returning home late at night and swimming in the indoor heated pool until he was exhausted enough to sleep. Most nights he dreamed restlessly until it was time to get up and go back to the office.
Only a few more weeks, now, and he could leave. He was determined to get through them without letting anyone know, especially Rebecca, how hard he’d fallen for her.
* * *
Rebecca had a secret vice. One she had never shared with anyone. Of course her parents knew she liked to paint. After all, they had paid for art lessons. However, they had also paid for tennis lessons, dancing lessons, music lessons, ballet lessons and horseback riding lessons.
What Rebecca had never shared with anyone was the subject matter that captivated her, that soothed her spirit and calmed her soul. What absorbed her attention when she wasn’t working, eating or sleeping was painting underwater fantasies. She currently had over twenty large canvases—safely under lock and key—denoting an entire world that existed in a wonderland of her creative mind.
The alarming bit of information that she had just discovered as she cleaned her brushes late one evening was that for the past several weeks the mermen she was adding to the groupings of mermaids, seahorses pulling a giant clam shell, colorful castles and iridescent crystals, all looked like Jake Taggart.
The shock of recognition had her staring at her latest canvas. There was no mistaking those eyes—or the wide shoulders and muscular chest. She’d only seen Jake without a shirt once or twice, but obviously those glimpses had been memorable enough glimpses to have stimulated her subconscious.
“Well, what do you know,” she murmured to herself while she studied the painting in front of her. It wasn’t difficult to trace back when her subconscious had taken over.
Ever since the night of the charity ball when Jake had behaved so out of character, he’d been haunting her thoughts, both day and night.
She’d never been able to understand his strange behavior. When they’d returned to work the following Monday he’d been his usual, formal self, the epitome of the professional executive. Not by so much as a hint of a glance, expression, or body language did he appear to remember what had taken place between them.
And what, after all, had happened, really? He had kissed her, that’s all. She’d been the one who’d felt all of those fabled things that were supposed to happen when that one particular person—that dream lover, that soul mate—finally came upon the scene. Like an impressionable adolescent, she’d definitely succumbed to the man’s considerable charms.
She felt like Sleeping Beauty, unawakened until her prince had come along. Oh, boy! And had he awakened her. It was all she could do to behave in the usual manner at the office. As soon as he walked into a room her heart started drumming loud enough to be heard by everyone there.
Whenever he spoke she found herself watching his mouth, remembering how it had felt pressed against hers, nibbling, soothing, possessing her. She felt as though he’d laid claim to her. Hadn’t he mentioned something about carrying her to his cave? Yes. That’s the way she’d felt.
And then he’d just walked away from her. Since then he’d acted as though nothing at all had happened between them. Business as usual.
So now she was painting him into her fantasies, making him a part of her life in the only way she knew how while he was probably counting the days until he could return to Texas.
She found the thought depressing.
She thoughtfully studied her work. It was no wonder she didn’t want anyone to know about her paintings. They revealed too much about her.
Her paintings reflected her inner yearning for a sparkling, magical world filled with friendly water-dwelling sprites. Her mother might have smiled and labeled them whimsical. Her father would have snorted and waved them away.
Her romantic nature was firmly locked away with her paintings, to be brought out only when she was assured of her privacy.
Now here she was staring at the results of her wildly romantic imaginings. She’d laugh if she wasn’t so dismayed. Jake Taggart? The lone wolf of West Texas? The mysterious mountain man?
No. This wouldn’t do. Absolutely not. She wasn’t ready for this. She would never be ready for this, not with somebody like Jake. Oh, she intended to marry someday. She wanted a husband, a family. But she had very definite ideas about the kind of man she knew would make her happy.
Jake Taggart didn’t fit any of her ideas.
The only thing Jake Taggart did was make her toes curl and her heart race.
She certainly didn’t intend to do anything about it.
Did she?
Would it be so wrong to explore all these new feelings that he’d awakened in her? Just because Jake wasn’t marriage material didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy him while he was here, did it?
She’d been so busy all these years, getting her education and working to prove to her father that she could do the job she’d been hired to do, that she had allowed her social life to lapse into a terminal coma.
Most of her school friends were married, at least once. A few had begun their families.
She, on the other hand, couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out on a date. Her father had been her escort at civic functions, just as she’d provided hostess duties whenever he’d done any business entertaining. Since his death she’d had no energy or inclination to accept any of the invitations to the various organizations they had supported in the past. Instead, she had sent a check along with her apologies and continued to deal with the daily running of the company.
Until the night of the charity ball.
The question was, what did she intend to do about all these feelings Jake Taggart had stirred up?
She found the question provocative in and of itself. Instead of passively accepting the status quo, she could actually choose some course of action that might change it.
An interesting thought. An empowering thought.
Her reputation was safe, if that had been one of her concerns. Since several members of the permanent staff lived on the premises it couldn’t be said that she and Jake were alone in any sense of the word.
What they had, however, and what she hadn’t appreciated until now, was privacy. The staff retired to the third floor each evening.
She glanced at her watch and wondered if Jake was home. It was after eleven. Surely he’d be home by now. She’d had dinner early tonight and retired to the study off her bedroom to paint. If Jake was home and if he hadn’t already gone to bed, where might she find him?
He rarely used her father’s study downstairs. Once or twice she’d seen him in the game room shooting billiards. And, of course, there was the evening she’d seen him at the swimming pool.
She smiled to herself. The swimming pool. Even if he wasn’t there, she would certainly enjoy taking a few laps in the pool to work some of the kinks out of her neck and shoulders after the hours she’d spent at the easel.
Rebecca felt a tingle of anticipation while she dug through her store of swimsuits and found the one she’d bought in France the last time she and her father had visited there. She’d never shown it to her father. To be perfectly honest, she’d never worn it at all, but she had liked the idea of owning something so decidedly impractical and unlike her businesslike image.
The thong bikini bottom left very little to the imagination while the top barely covered the rosy tips of her breasts. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror and inspected her body. All those salads she’d been eating most evenings had obviously done their job. There were no obvious bulges showing. There was nothing she could do about her too small breasts or her too slender legs, but all in all, she didn’t look so bad.
The question was, could she actually take the chance of running into Jake at the swimming pool wearing something so revealing?
The smile she gave her image was slow and uncharacteristically seductive. You bet, she muttered to herself.
&
nbsp; She found her beach jacket that demurely concealed her unclad body, slipped on a pair of sandals and went downstairs.
The house was quiet and mostly dark. Only the sconces in the foyer were left burning all night, giving necessary light to the staircase.
She went through the back of the house into the glass-walled addition her father had built to enclose the pool for their year-round enjoyment.
The water in the pool was so still it looked like painted glass in the silvery moonlight. No one was there. She felt a twinge of disappointment before shrugging it off. What had she expected, anyway? Perhaps these long hours painting her underwater world had warped her brain and she was trying to live out some of those fantasies!
With a chuckle, she slid the beach jacket off her shoulders and stepped into the pool, following the steps down through the shallow end until she was deep enough to swim.
The water felt like warm silk, sensuously wrapping around her body, and she sighed, pleased that she had thought of this wonderfully relaxing way to finish the evening. She didn’t take advantage of the convenience of having the pool nearly enough. It was so easy to fall into a routine and forget some of the pleasures that life offered.
She rolled over onto her back and closed her eyes, drifting in the caressing slickness of the liquid, her thoughts returning to Jake and how his likeness continued to crop up in her imaginings and fantasies.
Jake sat in the hot tub in the corner of the room wondering how in the hell he’d managed to get himself in this situation.
Only once in all the weeks he’d been here had he ever seen Rebecca at the pool, and that had been early one evening. She had never come downstairs this late at night...which is why he happened to be sitting in the hot tub without his bathing suit.
Instead of going to his room first, he’d come in, stripped out of his clothes and crawled into the bubbling massage of water, effectively working on his tired muscles. He hadn’t even bothered to check the kitchen to see what had been left for him to eat.
So now what did he do?
The tub was in the shadows at the end of the room. There was a better-than-even chance she wouldn’t see him if he chose to remain quiet. On the other hand, what could he say if she discovered his presence and asked why he hadn’t said something when she first came in?
Good question.
The problem was he hadn’t seen her come in. He’d been resting his head on the side of the tub with his eyes closed when he’d sensed that he wasn’t alone. He hadn’t heard her, which wasn’t surprising with the low hum of the water pump drowning out most of the night noises.
He’d opened his eyes in time to see her remove a short jacket that revealed she was wearing very little more than he was. He hadn’t seen anything but her back before she went into the water, but from that angle, her swimming attire appeared to be no more than a couple of shoestrings.
He watched her swim up and down the pool a few laps before she rolled over onto her back. Even in the shadowy moonlight he realized that what she wore hadn’t been designed to conceal anything from view.
He closed his eyes and mentally cursed his stupidity. Too bad he’d gotten used to having the house to himself whenever he’d arrived home this late at night. He’d known she was there, somewhere, but had never turned toward the wing where she slept, when he’d climbed the stairs.
So now what do you do? he asked himself.
Since he’d intended to swim after his dip into the hot tub, he wondered how much he would reveal if he decided to slip into the pool while she was still there. It was dark; how much could she see?
Or should he say something first? And have her spot him. Then she’d ask why he had continued to sit in the tub without calling attention to himself.
Nothing had trained him for the correct etiquette in this particular situation.
Maybe she would be leaving soon. Maybe, if he just waited her out, he’d be able to—to—
His unexpected sneeze eliminated his need to choose the best way out of his dilemma.
Six
Jake groaned as he heard the sudden splashing in the pool that verified Rebecca now knew she was not alone.
“Jake?” she asked, her voice sounding shaky.
“Yeah, it’s me, ‘Becca. Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She swam toward the steps and climbed out of the pool, padding toward him. The moonlight created stripes of light across the floor, which she walked through as she came toward him— first revealing, then concealing her from his view. However, there was sufficient light for him to see that she obviously hadn’t dressed for an audience.
You certainly couldn’t tell from her demeanor.
“I didn’t know you were here,” she said nonchalantly, for all the world as though they’d just met at the breakfast table, dressed for the office. She paused beside the pool and trailed her fingers through the roiling water. “Oh, this feels great. May I join you?”
“Be my guest,” he replied dryly. “However, I might as well tell you now that I neglected to put on my swimming trunks. I didn’t expect to see anybody down here at this time of night.”
All the while he was making his explanation he watched as she crawled into the tub and settled across from him with a pleasurable sigh, ignoring his warning. “Oh, yes, I can see why you’d head straight to this after a long day. Doesn’t it feel great?” She waited for him to reply, and when he didn’t say anything, she eyed him a little uncertainly. “I hope my joining you hasn’t caused you any embarrassment.”
He shrugged. “I was thinking along similar lines where you were concerned. I guess we’re both adults, here. It isn’t as though we haven’t seen bare bodies before.” Which was a good thing, he added to himself, since she might as well be nude.
She grinned, wearing a mischievous look that was totally unfamiliar to him. He found it adorable. “You credit me with a little more sophistication than I deserve, I’m afraid,” she confided cheerfully. “Except for photographs, statues and other works of art, I’ve never seen an adult male nude before. Are you offering to assist me in my continuing education?”
He almost choked. “Of course not!” he said in a strangled voice.
Damned if she didn’t look disappointed!
“You’re kidding me, of course,” he said after a moment.
“Nope.”
Now why did the idea of her virginal status seem to send shock waves through his system? The news should mean nothing to him. Nothing at all.
“Why not?” he heard himself ask.
“Why not what?”
He cleared his throat. “I mean, why haven’t you seen an adult male stripped to the buff before?”
She shrugged. “Guess I’ve never been that interested...or maybe it’s because I’ve been too busy pursuing my goals.” She sighed. “With the schedule I’ve been keeping for most of my life, I haven’t had many opportunities.”
Her foot accidentally brushed against his calf. Instead of jerking it away, she gently rubbed her toes down the length of his leg to his ankle, then she reversed the movement and slowly traced his leg with her foot back up to his knee.
An electrified cattle prod couldn’t have jolted him more. What the hell did she think she was doing? He shifted, deliberately giving her more space in the tub.
Her comments about the lack of a social life unfortunately reminded him of the conversation he’d overheard at the charity ball. He’d been an idiot that night, making the near-fatal— at least to his peace of mind— mistake of believing she’d needed protection from other people’s opinions.
Why hadn’t he minded his own business? He’d always been good at that. Why hadn’t he just—
“Jake?” Her voice sounded soft and dreamy in the stillness of the cavernous room.
“Yeah?” he replied after a moment.
“Are you sorry you came back to CPI?”
He let go of the air he’d inadvertently stored in his lungs. Taking another deep breath he forced himself t
o relax slightly before responding. “No. Not at all.”
“I’m glad. I wouldn’t want you to be unhappy here.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem to have any friends in Seattle. Don’t you miss them?”
He didn’t answer right away. Rebecca didn’t mind. Just being there with him was much more than she’d ever expected to have happen. So when he finally spoke she wasn’t certain that she heard him correctly. What she thought he said was “I’ve never had a friend.”
Surely she was mistaken in what she’d heard. After another long pause, she murmured, “Not ever?”
“Not really.”
“Not even a school friend?”
“Especially then. I was too busy working. I didn’t want Mel and Betty using up their retirement fund to help me through school. Besides, I’ve always been something of a loner.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Really! I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“I’ve never been good in social situations.”
“Now that’s where you could have fooled me. I remember watching you and Dad work a room during some of the business functions I attended over the years. Talk about a couple of pros!”
“That was different. I knew what was expected of me in a business situation. I knew what to say. I don’t understand friendships.” He thought back to Amanda and Millicent. If their examples of friendship were typical, he knew damned well he didn’t want any part of it.
Rebecca pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. “I’d like to be your friend, Jake,” she said softly. “But you’ll have to help me.”
“In what way?” he asked cautiously.
“Talk to me.”
He frowned. “I thought that’s what we were doing.”
She rested her chin on her knees. “Yes, that’s true. And it’s a start. The thing about friendships is that you share something about yourself with the other person. Something special. It’s like a gift you offer. Hopefully, the person will share something in return.”
He gave her a steady look. “Are you serious?”
She held his gaze. “Absolutely. Inviting me to see your home in the mountains could be construed as an overture of friendship. Showing me your valley and the wildlife— all of that was allowing me a glimpse of your private self, who you really are. As a result of that trip I opened my home to you...another offer of friendship.”
Mysterious Mountain Man Page 9